The colony patterns of Bacillus circulans on agar medium were experimentally investigated to study about the growth mode transition. From the optical microscopic observation, the bacteria distribute inside the medium, that is, the colony grows three-dimensionally (3D) in the soft agar condition...

Noise-induced absolute instability is demonstrated in computer experiments with a one-dimensional reaction–diffusion system. This phenomenon may occur in spatially extended flow systems of different nature, when the parameters are chosen close to the point of transition from convective to...

Colony morphology of wild and mutant strains of Aspergillus nidulans at various nutrient and agar levels was investigated. Two types of colony patterning were found for these strains. One type produced uniform colonies at all nutrient and agar levels tested, and the other exhibited morphological...

Several aspects of the theory of epitaxial crystal growth from atomic or molecular beams are developed from the perspective of statistical physics. Lectures are devoted to the rate equation theory of two-dimensional nucleation and its limitations; the growth of multilayer wedding cakes in the...

Observations of the peculiar behaviour of a drink of liqueur topped with cream led us to perform experiments showing that the instability is a convection phenomenon that arises through destabilizing surface-tension forces. The convection is solutal: driven by gradients of concentration of a...

The coarsening of an array of vortex ripples prepared in an unstable state is discussed within the framework of a simple mass transfer model first introduced by K. H. Andersen et al. (see Ref. 1). Two scenarios for the selection of the final pattern are identified. When the initial state is...

The turbulent advection of a reacting substance is considered. The existence of two different states, one smooth and the other filamental, is discussed. The transition between these states is characterized in terms of the competition of the stretching and folding mechanism of the turbulent field...

Although Vladimir Nabokov may be better known for his outstanding literary achievements, particularly as the author of the novel Lolita (1955), he had an equally impressive genius for science. While acting as curator at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology in the 1940s, he became an expert on...